What Does Acts 4:9 Mean?
If we are sifted today for a good deed done to the man without strength, by what means has he been delivered?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole;THE KEY
The word translated “made whole” here is also translated “saved” moments later: deliverance is visible as restored wholeness.
THE MEANING
A man stands whole, and the good done for him is what brings Peter and John under examination. The verse holds bodily restoration and deliverance together: what once kept this person in weakness no longer defines what is possible for him now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that bodily healing and deliverance are separate kinds of restoration; the same word names both.
THE ROOT
σέσωται
sesōtai
GROWS FROM
σῴζω (sōzō), σωζ-
To rescue, deliver, preserve, or make well.
The verb translated “made whole” also carries the sense of being delivered or saved. English can make healing and deliverance sound like separate events, while this word holds them together: the rescue is visible in the man’s restored condition.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēria: deliverance, salvation
σωτηρία
This related noun carries the same rescue language into the broader idea of deliverance.
sōtēr: deliverer, savior
σωτήρ
This related word names one who rescues, echoing the verse’s question about how the man has been made whole.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance becomes visible as restoration, whether it heals a body, rescues someone from destruction, or brings salvation.
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be delivered through him.There is no deliverance in any other, for there is no other nature under heaven given among people by which we must be delivered."THE THREAD
There is no deliverance in any other, for there is no other nature under heaven given among people by which we must be delivered."The final word translated “saved” comes from the same verb rendered “made whole” in Acts 4:9. Peter’s answer keeps the man’s bodily restoration and the wider language of deliverance within one word-family.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us